that's probably the best way to describe the fiscal talks between president obama and house speaker john boehner. with christmas less than two weeks away, the white house is faced with the same key question. can boehner deliver the votes for whatever deal they agree on? >> i remain optimistic and i'm pretty confident that republicans would not hold middle class taxes hostage to try to protect tax cuts for high income individuals. >> but with time running out, neither side seems to have budged very far from the original proposal. the only good news about what happened in the past 24 hours, they are not publicly trashing each other's proposals. on monday the white house sent boehner a counteroffer which at beast can be incremental movement. almost on the details of the offer are under wraps. the $1.6 trillion in tax revenue the president was demanding can come down to slightly under 1.4 trillion. it's still $600 billion higher than the republican position. in a signal to the president in his conference, basically said the president's counteroffer was uncut. >> where are the president's spe